lectures at the Animalia festival
by anythingbutessays
Summary: result of musings on the implications of such a remarkable world; what questions would scientists be asking, what answers would they be finding. (Sorry to all scientists, I'm but a humble archaeologist). Rated T for scientific content.
1. Chapter 1

**The result of musings on the implications of such a brilliant world as Zootopia, the questions scientists would be asking and some possible answers. Simian is based on the great David Attenborough.**

 **...**

 **A miraculous convergence**

The lectures of the Animalia festival

The officers of ZPD shuffled in to the auditorium seats. This was far from the usual office night out, all were sharply dressed, even officer wild had dispensed with his favourite loose tie in favour of an open necked white shirt and blazer; the press, they had been warned, would be watching.

The invite had been received at the station with some confusion, tickets to the opening night of the Zootopia Animalia festival, an event with the aim of increasing understanding and integration between species. After a certain high profile case in the previous year the festival, usually a popular but low profile event (save the final parade) was under pressure to put to rest the remaining tensions on both side. As such the usually artistic festival had been coupled with a lecture series disguising the currently tenuous understanding of Zootopia's history. It had been decided that the heroes of the ZPD should attend, symbols of recent victories.

The audience was filled with dignitaries, the acting mayor sat in a box to the right of the stage. TV cameras at the back pointed toward the stage while others at the front captured the audience. A chubby cheetah waved as one swiped past.

Tonight's lectures were to be introduced by the beloved biologist David simian. While none of the department had much of a history in biology many had grown up with simian's documentaries, as had many of their parents. A chance to meet him had been a deal breaker for many a sceptical officer.

The lights dimmed and the audience hushed. The curtains drew back to reveal a stage populated by mounted skeletons, posed as in life, sitting, walking, one caribou wielded a cricket bat. Standing amongst them was a chimp, hunched with age but rocking from heel to toe with a youthful energy, long arms behind his back and a glint in his bespectacled eyes. The audience applauded, the familiar kaki shirt returning them to family evenings in front of the TV as its occupant clambered over rocks in some far off jungle introducing some new discovery, creature or culture.

…

The applause died down as he eyed the crowd, seeming to make eye contact with everyone simultaneously

"How is it that we may have this miraculous convergence?"

Began Simian, his voice hushed, his elocution sharp,

"that we may all sit here, together, Related by only the most tenuous strands of genetics and not tear one another to pieces. That through no deliberate coercion I may speak and you may understand, and share in my wonder of that of which many suggest is incapable of arising from in eons of random mutation, environmental change, and savage nature."

He spoke the last two words slowly, with conviction; a ripple moved through the crowd, the accusatory words still had a powerful effect.

He smiled reassuringly. Behind him a cross-section of two skulls appeared, one a lion the other an antelope; a familiar paring from natural history museum dioramas.

"These are the MRI scans of the skulls of two of my associates, you will notice the obvious morphological differences, however you many not notice the brain cavities" he outlined them with a laser pointer. "Are of similar volume when compared to body mass and while the lion has a larger visual cortex and the antelope a larger auditory cortex the frontal lobes a similarly enlarged, the amygdala (the heart of aggression) similarly small. Pleas recognise that the overwhelming scientific consensus is that, regardless of PHDs, everyone in this room is a psychological equal." The room relaxed, the tone set.

"However, therein lies our problem," (two new skulls appeared, once again a lion and an antelope)

"These skulls were excavated from rock strata five million years old; you will notice far more significant differences. The brain of the antelope is considerably smaller and the jaw considerably more specialised, it has only one purpose, to chew. Meanwhile the lion is somewhat better off, the frontal cortex is already predominant but his jaw is constrained by these massive muscle anchors; you won't be having a conversation with either of these chaps any time soon, and as seen by these tooth marks on the back of the head, the lion did not meet a happy end."

He turned back to the audience. "These animals are so different in their lifestyles, intelligences and physiology it seems that it seems no singular environmental factor could have pushed them in the same direction, to provide an evolutionary pressure two these two animals would be like throwing a stone in a pond, each would move but in entirely different directions."

"And do not think that intelligence is a common occurrence in nature, because until recently it wasn't. Why did the dinosaurs die out I ask you? Because they didn't have a space program. There are no fossilised civilisations of insects from the carboniferous and no current signs of intelligence in the oceans."

"Then came the Chenozoic explosion and seemingly overnight we have animals from every genus on two legs and using tools." Ghostly images of shapes etched on to deserts, colourful LIDAR scans of geometric patterns on forest floors and stone tools flashed up behind him. "earlier and earlier civilisations are being discovered as we speak and the earliest species to reach that status is unconfirmed, we still have little clue as to how first peace ever occurred between predator and prey. But I will leave that subject to Dr Parcat." He nodded to a female ocelot seated in the front row, where the day's speakers were seated.

"And so" he raised his eyebrows "we have a problem" a large flow chart appeared behind him, one side showed a lion lunging at an antelope, claws extended the antelope's eyes wide in fear; the next a similar pair playing golf the lion sticking his tong out as he went for the putt. In-between the two an arrow label; a miracle occurs. A polite chuckle rippled through the audience.

... more to come.


	2. Chapter 2

chapter 2,

"So, let's start at the beginning. What causes intelligence? Two things are needed, an evolutionary pressure which favours intelligence and a body which can engage with that pressure. For example it is often pointed out that primate's, such as my Uncle Jim here." he walked over to a fossilised ape posed hanging from a branch. "Who developed apposable thumbs long before intelligence were set up to evolve to intelligence as a product of the complex tools facilitated by these thumbs" He wiggled is own. "The mind adapting to accommodate the bodies potential."

"Thankfully, this seems not to have been the only driving force in our current situation." Behind him flashed an x ray of two paws, one was an ordinary canine paw, with thumb sticking out to the side; the other was a stubby affair, all five toes crammed together, built absorb impact rather than send tweets."

"How do we get from here to here? There is no evidence that foxes took to the trees in the last few million years. And so we ask, can we imagine intelligence before tools? Did the body adapt to for fill the minds potential?"

"Imagine if you will, awakening in this body."

An artist's depiction of a primitive hyena, sat on its haunches, tongue lolling to one side, a hyena in the row in front to the ZPD shuffled uncomfortably.

"Your mind unchanged, you would doubtlessly find a way to use tools no matter how simple, no matter how unsuited your physique. Do we not see amputees improvising with very rudimentary prosthetics when needed? An advanced mind can overcome physical boundaries. And as soon as the paw became even the slightest bit useful in the use of tools a strong force would be set up, forcing the digits to extend and the fifth to become a thumb."

"However to get there we must imagine another pressure to gain that intelligence, the complex social structures of many predators seems to suggest one such solution. For If a minor increase in intelligence became a sexual attractor in a species, as ornate feathers do in birds of paradise; then by evolutionary feedback loop we can imagine a self-perpetuating trait, until it becomes in itself useful, perhaps through the development of simple language. This however is near impossible to experimentally prove, I shall leave that task to Dr Cloon and his simulations." (another nod). "While this provides one potential rout to intelligence to all animals with social habits it does not account for the near perfect timing with witch much of Animalia rose to consciousness."

"This leap is the true miracle that occurred here, we can theorise mechanisms to generate intelligence from the many and varied starting points presented by the savage times but to see them all simultaneously spring to action; not seeing a single species charge ahead, and possibly stalling the progress of all others beggars belief. As such, the probability of these being independent events is nil."

"This is where wild speculation abounds, an intelligent paw is often invoked, aliens, gods, a single species gaining intelligence in the far past before granting it to all others and disappearing. However I can assure you that there is no evidence of the latter in the fossil record. Any civilisation of the size required to reach that level of advancement would create its own discernible geological strata, as we are currently doing, the mining and releasing of radioactive isotopes, fossilised carbon and non-organic chemicals; these will one day create a strata that clearly says "civilisation was here". On the matter of aliens and gods I reserve judgment."

"What we can say is this was not a clean process. The chenozoic explosion is in many ways misnamed, as it was in fact a mass extinction event."

Images of strange fossils flashed on the screen behind the chimp, cats with canines the size of daggers, sloths as tall as trees.

"These are just some of the thousands of species that went extinct at the same time our own species reached new highs. Some show increased brain capacity, others not, it seems they were too late to the party, falling behind as their close relatives took over there evolutionary niche with their ever increasing intellect."

"While we may never find the cause, some simulations suggest something as undetectable as a single species of bacteria could have triggered the event, we will continue to search. The mammal genome program has begun the monumental task of sequencing the genome of countless mammals, searching for common markers." A Meerkat in a lab coat whooped from the front row. "While large scale analysis of environmental and ecological histories seeks to identify factors that may have contributed to such a monumental shift. Archaeologists are doubling their search for the earliest uses of tools, agriculture and housing with powerful new remote sensing technology while others are researching the earliest evidence of prey predator cooperation in the canine-rodent trading ports of the east."

"I have mentioned just some of the myriad of challenges facing science in understanding the wonder that is our world, some of which we shall explore tonight. But be without doubt; We are filling in the gaps, and we are, as you will learn tonight, ever more encouraged by what we see; that our existence is not unnatural, that we need no guiding paw to balance our society atop week foundations of barely concealed savagery. That we have built, upon mutual trust and benefit a world where we choose what we are, set free from the forces that, for the next few days at least, we shall ponder."

"I hope you enjoy the remainder of the talks and find you're compelled to be anything; I leave you with dead animal enthusiast Dr Eileen Parcat."

There was enthusiastic applause as the chimp bowed, the crowd laughed and cheered even louder as he stepped backward on to a hidden platform and was lowered below the stage amid a cloud of Smoak, gazelle thumping out of the speakers. Thoroughly out of character for the aged professor, but really, perfect for the young at heart naturalist.


	3. Chapter 3: archaeology

**Based on the myriad of subjects I've been studying this year (yes skull nests are a real thing), brief scientific description of body modification for the squeamish.**

 **enjoy**

 **...**

The crowd's applause continued as simian disappeared from view, the music faded from upbeat pop to the triumphant "Raiders march". Out on to stage jogged a petite ocelot, obviously caught up in the moment. She wore an olive green canvas jacket, cargo pants and chunky ankle straps. the recently famous archaeologist, Dr Eileen Parcat. she had flown in from the subject of her lecture earlier that day, her sun bleached fur still bedraggled from a hasty shower, but she grinned in to her microphone all the same, she'd been saving up announcements for months now, keeping her research on sight and secret. This was the big one.)

"Interspecies integration is, as we have unfortunately seen, one of the trickier aspects of our world. Tonight, I shall introduce you to an individual who was part of the creation of that world and the city that flew in the face of nature, creating, we believe, the earliest truly integrated culture we have yet discovered."

"We all know the stories of the legendary first collaborations between predators and prey; grudging dependencies driven by the unstoppable forces of the first long distance trade routes, money extraction schemes run by my own species on alpaca trains turning in to genuine salaried guards. The great navel trade networks run by voles, sailed by foxes. Along with the legends of cross species adoptions, predators raised by prey and prey raised by predators, a concept visible in every culture."

"We thought that every case of integration was a begrudging one; weir species remained segregated even within the same city, only becoming accepting after centuries of coexistence. Or so we thought."

A blotchy black and white image appeared, no discernible shape was visible save for the obvious curve of a river, silhouetted in black against the textured background.

"This spectroscopic photograph shows the levels of chlorophyll in plants on the flood plain of the Huo Hsing River. A drop in chlorophyll denotes a change in geology below the immediate surface, changing the levels of water the plants have access to. We have applies this technique to millions of Squair kilometres of the flood plains of the worlds rivers, the places most hospitable to burgeoning civilisations. We have found extensions to known civilisations." faded street plans beneath farmer's fields "rivers that have changed cause by hundreds of kilometres." a pale river flowing across bare savannah. "Then last spring, we found this."

A new photo. The ghostly outline of a rough semi-circle backed on to the broad river, a scale below the image made the circle 2 kilometres in diameter. Along the river banks stretched further ghostly lines. "These are the walls of a city, six thousand years old, population at its height, fifteen thousand. Welcome to point one on the graph of civilisation."

The ocelot smiled, the eyes of the audience wide, glad she'd kept this under wraps.

This city existed in cruel times, a hundred miles to the south we find massive deposits of prey bones, scraped by knife and tooth, within years and miles we find this."

A circular arraignment of dirty, white rounded objects, looking like a birds nest full of eggs.

"This phenomenon has been dubbed a skull nest, this represents some fifty individuals, all predators, all beheaded."

"As one may imagine, this was not an open, welcoming place; the walls, now buried, are ten meters thick, clad in stone and by the amount of rubble we estimate ten meters high. It, like many early sights, appears to be a prey only metropolis, supported by a hinterland of farms in the flood plain."

"It is well known that through the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods the food chain changed very little; predators continued to hunt, all be it with spears and traps; while prey lead a fearful gatherer- grazer lifestyle. But imagine being a predator living in the area around this city, suddenly much of your food supply is gone; the prey locked behind walls, the landscape compact and defendable. evidence suggests that in many later cases this lead either to predetorial extinction in a locality or a bitter fishing community, isolated by firmly held boundaries, Unable to form links until the long distance trade routes began around five thousand years ago."

"Here," she outlined the fuzzy lines that matched the banks of the river. "Ditch and bank earthworks suggest an active defence of access to the water. Was the inhabitancy of the city actively trying to drive away carnivorous species? While excavations are yet to have been carried out this seems to be the prime purpose, the walls being too low for water control."

"Now this all seems well and good. A proto city, defended, connected to the world by river; Sounds pretty standard." She smiled at the crowd, showing her teeth. "Then things get weird."

"Our first anomaly came in the form of these large pits laid in to the perimeter wall. At first we thought them to be granaries, and indeed many of them were. However, Soil samples from the three showed massive quantities of salt ingrained in to the walls and core samples taken showed a layer of thick organic residue. It was in fact a storage facility for salted fish. Well, no biggie, perhaps they were trading with predator communities up and down the river, tapping in to developing trade; or paying protection fees."

"Then, come our preliminary excavations in a graveyard we found the unprecedented." The ochre stained skeleton of a big cat appeared, lying in the foetal position, a red and white scale stick laid alongside, the remains of a pot at its feet, two identical burials either side containing a bore and a small deer.

"This is Jessie, a female leopard, 30 years old at death and the earliest predator known buried alongside prey using the same customs. We at first thought she may be an anomaly but then."

A chipped fresco showing the stylised faces of numerous species, bovine, porcine a tapir to the bottom right, dotted among were the faces of leopards and one wolf, recognisable save for the addition of two red streaks down the cheeks.

"This combined with the large food stores points to a large predator population, around seven percent of the overall population." the crowd was silent; this was entirely new, history reweighting stuff.

"Here we have predators and prey equal in death, and so we must ask, were they so in life."

She turned to the screen; a 3d scan of the skull of the leopard appeared there.

"The first thing any osteologist will tell you about Jessie is that she is no ordinary cat. Here the masseter muscle anchors." her laser outlined a rough area below the orbits of the eyes. "Are severely underdeveloped. This may well suggest a reason for her social acceptability in a prey city; she would have struggled to chew the most tender stew, let alone raw muscle mass. Isotope analysis of her teeth has revealed she was pescatarian from at least the age of five when she lost her milk teeth."

"We suspected that this was the result of an unknown genetic deformity but then we saw this." The skull was replaced by a reassembled jar; ochre paints depicted once again the face of a leopard save for the same two bright red gashes down the cheeks as on the fresco.

"These jars, we suspect, contained internal organs, a precursor to later mummification practices in the region, those markings on the cheeks do not appear on any known species of cat living or dead, yet here they appear on all depictions of predators."

"The prominent theory is that that this is symbolic of a form of body modification deliberately intended to disarm the predator. Two cuts, very precise, made to the primary jaw muscle at an early age; preventing the eye orbit developing the strength required to be considered dangerous. These would have been clear to see by the bisection in of the cheek displaying the disarmament to all she met." Some members of the audience were now clutching their cheeks or grinding teeth, one beaver in a tuxedo stood up and headed for the bathrooms.

"This hypothesis shocked us, we were naturally warried as to the life Jessie may have lived, was she enslaved, a high status symbol of power over predators perhaps."

"Clues against this however come thick and fast. She retains her claws, her teeth, there are no signs on her wrists or ankles of the swelling that results from long term waring of manacles. She led an active life, but not a damaging one; legions on her knuckles suggest work with fishing equipment.

The estimated predator population of seven percent is too small to constitute an effective slave population, these usually hover around thirty percent and While slaves have been buried with dignities before; they have always been marked as having been so, usually by a mournful owner, so unless this entire burial ground is for slaves, all evidence suggests Jessie was an ordinary citizen, save her weak jaw. However until we find more predators we cannot confirm her place in society. She may still just have been a deformed child, abandoned and adopted; but we suspect she was part of a tradition that was a promise of peace between her and the prey she lived amongst."

"This may sound a brutal practice but; Jessie was not tied to the city. she could have still killed, even eaten, with the correct cooking and preparation, her neighbours. But, if we're correct, the scars she bore served as a strong visual reminder to all she met that she had participated in an initiation in to society. This is why the red marks are such predominant features in the portraits of predators; a sign of pride; an expectation of trust in a still untrustworthy world. One the inhabitancy of this city evidently honoured."

"Archaeology is a science, scepticism is healthy. But should the evidence continue to play out, we may have a new story to tell our children, not of how we were first dragged from our bondage to conflict by the equally insurmountable forces of economics and politics but by a small city, on the shores of the Huo Hsing River that made that greatest of leaps, by trust."

The audience, suddenly recognising the speeches end began to clap, a rolling applause that grew and grew to a deafening roar, below the auditorium in the press gallery journalists typed franticly. Parcat bowed to cheers before exiting stage right, grinning from ear to ear.


	4. Chapter 4 astronauts

How differently would the space exploration develop in a world where you can recruit astronauts that weigh as little as ten grams? Whatever happened to that sheep who wanted to be an astronaught.

I'm unsure about the structure and flow. To dry? To nerdy? To simple? Pleas review.

As Parcat left the stage the spaced out tones of rocket mouse filled the auditorium. On to stage rolled a Segway, apparently self-propelled, it was only when the screen switched to live feed that revealed that the tiny sand coloured blob on a platform where the handle bars would normally be was a kangaroo rat; Dressed in the blue flight suit of the ZSA, aviators perched on his short snout. He saluted the crowd as he lapped the stage before coming to a halt front and centre as the music faded, folding the glasses in to a breast pocket.

"Now when I arrived tonight I was disappointed to find I had left my laser pointer at home, then Dr Simian let me borrow his." He hefted the six by two centre meter stainless steel tube on to his shoulder, holding it like a rocket launcher, striking a pose. "I'm not disappointed any more, he grinned."

"Now to business." He slung the pointer over his back on a make shift harness. "Ron Kapule, astronaut, mechanic on expedition 130 and 140 to lunik base and riding shotgun on the Ibis 2 planetary flyby in three years' time. Still without a driver's licence though".

He looked distracted for a second before snapping back to the audience.

"I'd like you to introduce you to a very special place, one I haven't been yet but hope to visit one day."

Behind him a fuzzy aerial photograph appeared, craters dotted a grey landscape, in the centre stood a bright Wight dome, airlocks visible around the peripheries, rovers parked outside and solar panels stood in banks to the north. A Zootopian flag was the only colour, flying from a flag pole to the south, held out ridged by a meatal rod.

"Unity observatory, Schrödinger crater, far side of the moon, built over ten years to service some of the most sensitive scientific instruments ever constructed. It has accommodation for a crew of six, state of the art chemical, physical and medical laboratory, panoramic views and most recently, infinity pool and volley ball court." He pointed to the locations on a blue print while images of the respective features flashed up, stopping on a shot of four mice in space suits playing volley ball, pink bikinis strapped over bulky life support packs.

"This location, in its short life, has yielded a higher volume of knowledge, adventure and high quality dicking around than possibly any in history. It is a jewel in our civilisations crown."

"And yet we at the ZSA have a significant problem, one that has become glaringly obvious in the last few years; crewed space flight, our greatest adventure has for some fifty years now, remained our moats exclusive exploit. Unity base fills a space barely five cubic meters. The heaviest crew member to ever visit weighed ninety grams; No non rodent has ever left low earth orbit. This is not good enough."

"Many have argued, quite justifiably, that the exclusion of astronauts over one hundred grams has served our space program well. Indeed, we have cheated radiation and gravity with shielding and centrifuges that would be too cumbersome at any other scale; we have saved hundreds of billions on the R and D needed to build and a launch vehicles capable of getting up to a hundred tons in to orbit at a time, this is what we estimate would have been the requirement to get a crew of just three mid class mammals in to lunar orbit."

"The most powerful rocket we operate, the titan, is capable of five tons to orbit. This is after-all all the satellite industry requires, and is enough to get two tons of supplies to the moon, this means that unity was complete within seven launches, and only needs resupplying once every five years. meaning we can support hundreds of individuals off planet at any one time running thousands of experiments, servicing the scientific industries beyond all expectations. This is not something that could have been achieved with large mammals without funding a hundred fold what it is today."

"It dose however mean that when Alan (ham) Hamilton became the first mid class mammal to make orbit forty years ago; well lest just say he strapped his ship on as much as was strapped in to it." A polaroid of A boar, strapped in too a bucket seat, surrounded by hundreds of caged switches grinned from inside his pressure helmet, arms crushed in to his sides by the thin walls of the capsule. "During that flight he burned through enough resources to keep 380 mice alive for the same period."

"Thus As we look to the future, reassessing the purpose of spaceflight, to wider exploration; we find that our lack of foresight is screwing us. One date, little known outside the nerdiest of spaceflight circles will forever be mourned at the bot lab. In the fall of 1977, the planets aligned in such a way that if we had had a launch vehicle capable of just fifteen tons to orbit we could, with a single probe, have made all the gas giants and interstellar space; this was an opportunity that comes once every 175 years and we missed it."

"Then we find ourselves wanting to send probes to even the inner planets, and indeed we have, they weigh barely ten kilograms and consist of little more than a camera and spectrometer. The ibis program that took five mice past Venus last year was as bare bone as it gets and required dangerous in orbit assembly; were not getting boots on any planet any time soon, no matter how small."

"And then we have the immortal ideal, **"** anyone can be anything", this is fundamental to what makes us great and so it should be in space flight; until now, larger mammals like ham and a few others remained token animals, biological experiments and in the case of the space stations dexterous heavy construction equipment. This isn't good enough, the rodent population has a tradition of producing great systems mechanics, we have after all been servicing the worlds need for intricate mechanisms for the last four centuries; but we simply don't have enough scientists and so many perfect candidates have sailed by purely on the basis they weigh over a thousand grams. As we move further away from home we need higher qualified mammals, not just mechanics, we want to be able to recruit from military sectors and the entirety of the scientific community."

"To quote the great highland terrier himself, we need more power. So Last year ZSA announced the M1 rocket, at a hundred meters tall, it has the mythical hundred ton to orbit payload. An engine test last week caused sound complaints three counties away, a new record for the pyromaniacs with PHDs at RPL."

"This will facilitate our first significant robotic landings, The nerds over at the bot lab are beside themselves; Their already talking about nuclear powered laser robots on mars, we had a drug squad raid the lab but turns out that's what engineers come up with when you give them tons rather than grams to play with. But more importantly it will see maned exploration of the planets and a new class of astronaut."

"And so, to take you in to the future, I would like to introduce a woman who makes a doddery old rocket jockey like me jealous of where she's going, the head of the Leo class astronauts; Cassie Bloomfield."

A sheep, surprisingly young for an astronaut stepped out to enthusiastic applause; the customary blue flight suit looking odd on such a large animal, a severe buzz cut contrasting with wide eyes and wider smile. In the audience one rabbit gaped in recognition, the sheep she'd known at school had headed abroad to study astrophysics, having recognised in her teens that her species was not just a social but a very physical barrier to her dream job, and now here she stood, very delicately fist bumping Kapule; who bowed, turned and took the wheelchair ramp stage left to take his place back in the audience.

"Thanks Ron, she turned to the audience still grinning, well this is thrilling she began; swinging her arms in excitement. I won't bore you with a life story; needless to say When I was ten I decided I wanted to be an astronaut, then when I was thirteen I met a mouse for the first time, bit of a bummer. All the same; a masters in astrophysics and commercial piolets licence later and your chundering in a centrifuge."

A photo appeared, showing her lent over a bucket, a badger technician patting her on the back, the massive arm of the device looming behind them, the audience chuckled.

"Of cause it's not that easy, they also shave you so you'll fit in a liquid cooling garment, but any-hoo. The leo program; The precursor we hope to long distance space exploration for astronauts of every genus. We aim, within five years, to have a permanent orbital outpost maned entirely by a crew weighing over forty five kilograms each. It shall remain a medical and physical laboratory to test the suitability of species for space flight. Were still unsure if we won't just explode up there; but oh well, that's what I'm here for."

"We will be launching aboard the new Artemis spacecraft and M1 booster. Capable of sustaining a Leo crew of four for two weeks. While a ship of this size is more powerful than the ibis craft conducting planetary fly byes currently, it faces a considerable challenge. Traditionally gravity has been artificially generated by spinning space craft; we are now working on a scale where that is impractical. Shielding also has to go, with a standard rodent ship we simply have everybody sleep in a lead case, no longer possible, we would be talking about doubling the weight of the ship."

"So, we expect to encounter o few minor and possibly deadly side effects, or as we at the ZSA like to put it, challenges." she said brightly.

"Our primary concerns are predictably biological. What are the effects of weightlessness on a mammal? We have only just begun experiments with mice in anticipation of the centrifugeless craft of larger mammals. The effects however are hard to deduce, bone loss is detected but we anticipate that the larger the mammal the greater the effects will be."

"So, how does one go about predicting the effects of space flight on large mammals? Well we thought that getting to know the extreme opposite of what we are used to was a good place to start."

"Meet Rich;" an elephant this time, bent over the same bucket, being patted on the back by the same badger in a lab coat, the centrifuge pod behind him; noticeably reinforced; "formally of astrodynamics and honorary lab elephant. The biologists love the data points he's giving us; as many of my smaller colleagues will gleefully tell you, elephants are damn delicate."

The audience looked confused.

"Let me elaborate. Materials don't scale well, so while a mouse's capillaries only have to withstand the pressure of a few grams of blood, elephants virtually identical capillaries have to withstand 245 litters. Start turning up the gees and we have a problem. I, as a mid-class mammal reach G-LOC and pass out around nine G. rich on the other hand;" she turned to the screen. a video played, the young elephant in a green flight suit was strapped in to a centrifuge; lights flashed behind him as he was spun up to speed; the digital readout dialled up to two G, his breathing became laboured then as the dial reached 3 G his ears became limp and his head sagged. "G-LOC" appeared in red on the readout.

"While we have a few tricks to increase tolerance this is still a major problem, the highest we have got Rich to is six G, and that's just for thirty seconds, a launch takes minutes and the lower the acceleration the less efficient the launch as the rocket spends more time in the thick atmosphere. for perspective, were currently launching rodents at twenty G, if we tried this on Rich, as our medical officer put it we'd have a code brown followed by celestial discharge, for those unacquainted with medical slang, look It up, needless to say we don't intend to try it."

"On the other end of the scale we have some interesting results from the vomit comet, our zero G aircraft. In what many are beginning to call the kill Rich program we strapped him in and, well…"

A fish eye video taken from the striped out interior of a large aircraft, rich stood, still in his green suit, at one end while a cheetah stood to one side holding on to a bungee cord with one paw, camera in the other. A green light flashed and both sets of feet left the ground. The cheetah held his position, using his tail to counter balance any rotation. Rich on the other hand was kicking as if trying to swim, his foot contacted the wall and two tons of physicist barrelled down the aircraft, the cheetah dodged by flipping on to the ceiling, keeping his camera pointed at Rich; Rich continued until he impacted the fish eye camera which cut out.

"You'll be pleased to know that only the go pro was injured; Furthermore Rich suffered no immediate adverse effects. However ECG sensors show dramatic changes in the distribution of blood in his body even for this brief period. This we suspect is due to the capillaries in his legs contracting as they no longer half to hold his blood against the force of gravity, forcing it towards his head. A delightful phenomena that some are worried will cause headaches, blurred vision and in the case of larger animals nose bleads or at worst aneurisms."

"Plans to send Rich on a suborbital flight to test this hypothesis is still in the works but rest assured his trials are far from over."

"in the meantime; When Artemis one launches next year; myself, Jake Melvin and Laika Treshkova;" photos of a mountain goat and Siberian wolf posed in space suits in front of the Zootopian flag; helmets under arms, grins on faces; "will be the first to fly without the accompaniment of rodent astronauts. We will be self-sufficient for the two week shake down. If all goes well and we don't start bleeding from our eyes, Artemis 2 will dock with the single module Orion station for a three month stay to begin serious biological experiments, test space suits and the plethora of new technologies needed to support life on an unprecedented scale."

"From there, the sky ceases to be the limit. Having large mammals and heavy equipment on the moon will be vital in the expansion of unity observatory; the current ten meter array can be expanded hundredfold; while mining operations can begin on a scale useful beyond supplying existing bases; servicing larger space missions and even sending rare materials back to earth; not to mention some epic photo ops."

On the floor of a massive swimming pool in front of a mock up lunar habitat wearing space suits stood Laika and Rich, the latter balancing on the formers helmet. If it weren't for the sea lion safety diver floating off to one side the situation would have been utterly surreal.

"I would be lying if I didn't say that the brave men and women of the rodent community haven't done an astounding job, their work has given us forty years of experience managing complex crewed operations on an astounding scale and will likely continue as trail blazers far in to the future. But we have also failed ourselves, maintaining restrictions that have not only restricted us as socially but scientifically. With the leo program we are setting the record straight, proving that we will always be better in collaboration. To counter the now infamous words of a member of my own species, were looking out for the big guys as well."

"These are the first steps that will ensure that when we do put boots on another world and make home elsewhere, we will be doing so not just as a species but as a society."

Cassie bowed to the applause that rolled in from the audience as #spaceforall flashed behind her; looking up at the sound of whooping from the block of police officers. Her eyes opened in surprise at the sight of an old school friend (she hadn't been one for following the news in the hectic months since her graduation). As she took her place in the audience she whipped out her phone searching for Hops and sent a friend request; they would have a lot to catch up on later.

A very nerdy chapter, lots of real world references,

Lunik = USSR lunar probe and rover series

Schrödinger crater = real far side crater near South Pole of moon; named after the farther of Quantum physics and his infamous cat.

The Saturn IV of Apollo fame had a capacity of 140 tons to orbit to take three "mid class" mammals to the lunar surface.

Fall 1977 was the launch of the voyager probes which for years were our only close up view of the outer planets and still our only close encounters with Neptune and Uranus.

Alan (ham) Hamilton, named after Alan Shepard (first American in space) and Ham (first monkey in space (however Ham felt like the unfortunate nick name of a boar))

Highland terrier = Scottie dog (yes I know it a domestic species but maybe there was some weird medieval inbreeding going on in medieval "Zootopian Scotland")

M1 = reference to the N1 rocket, the soviet equivalent to the Saturn IV. It had 36 engines in its first stage alone. It launched once and exploded within seconds.

Rich of astrodynamics = "rich Pernell" off "the Martian"

Look up the medical slang yourself

Nuclear laser robot on mars = curiosity rover (NASA is freekin awesome)

Artemis = goddess of the hunt and wild animals

Orion = her husband

Jake Melvin; Leland Melvin; astronaut with coolest official photo ever, Jake is his dogs name

Laika = first dog in space (USSR); sadly died in orbit

Treshkova = Valentina Tereshkova (USSR), first woman in space

Swimming pool = neutral buoyancy lab


End file.
